SandyMaloneBronx, NY – The father of the teenage girl featured having sex in the rap video that may have led to the death of a 15-year-old Bronx boy spoke out on Friday, and apologized to the victim’s family.
“I cried a lot… it’s disgusting to see my daughter in a video like that,” Javier told the New York Post through a sign language interpreter. His last name has been withheld because his juvenile daughter may have been the victim of sex crimes.
Police have arrested a total of eight suspected gang members in connection with the June 20 slaying of 15-year-old Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz.
Guzman-Feliz, a member of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Explorers program who dreamed of becoming a police detective when he grew up, was dragged out of a bodega by five members of the Trinitarios, a violent Dominican street gang, and hacked to death on a Bronx street corner.
Investigators believe that members of the Trinitarios may have attacked the teen as retaliation for a raunchy porn video, which showed a naked teenage girl who was possibly related to one of the gang members.
Gang members were either mistaken when they chose their victim, or someone involved with the video misdirected them, because several high-level Trinitarios reached out to Guzman-Feliz’s family afterward to apologize for their error.
“I know it doesn’t mean a lot. It wasn’t supposed to be him,” a Trinitarios “top leader” wrote in a message to the slain teen’s family in the wake of the attack, according to the New York Post.
In the video, which was posted on social media, one male rapped as another – who bore a striking resemblance to Guzman-Feliz – had sex with a girl whose face was covered with a shirt, the New York Daily News reported.
Javier, 43, said that his daughter would have been between 13 and 14 years old at the time the illicit video was filmed, according to the New York Post.
“I don’t know what happened. Their mother doesn’t raise them right… It’s pathetic,” he said.
The devastated father told the New York Post that he immediately recognized his daughter when his brother sent him a rap video on Facebook that featured teens having sex.
Javier said he also has a 14-year-old son and a 17-year-old son with his daughter’s mother, and he cannot imagine how any of his children could have been involved in Guzman-Feliz’s murder. He also said their mother had an order of protection against him but did not tell the New York Post why it was issued.
He said he and his daughter have received numerous death threats via social media, and he is afraid.
“Everybody on Facebook is saying it’s my fault, but I don’t know anything, I haven’t seen her,” Javier said.
“I have to be careful walking around, I’m scared… I’m worried… I need my safety for these children,” he told the New York Post.
He said he has not yet been contacted by the police regarding the case, and said his daughter is not the young woman for whom the NYPD has been providing protection, according to the New York Post.
A high-ranking NYPD source told the New York Post on Monday that a 15-year-old girl had been placed under police protection due to an onslaught of social media threats after Guzman-Feliz’s brutal murder.
Many of the messages blamed that teenage girl, who is also a member of the police department’s Explorers program, for causing Guzman-Feliz’s death, the source said.
Some of the messages referred to the girl as a “whore.”
The teen was subsequently placed under NYPD protection while the investigation continued.